Her expression became more serious. ‘He’s taken some stuff down to the boat. I think he’s keen to make a quick getaway as soon as the inspector says so.’ She hesitated. ‘Or maybe he just wants to get away from me. We’ve just had a major argument, and I’ve told him it’s all over between us.’
Although I was curious to know why they had been arguing, I had no time to stop and talk. Freddie Baker was my number-one priority for now.
I thanked her and hurried off in the direction of the main entrance to check that Freddie Baker wasn’t thinking of leaving – but I was too late. I was just going through the archway and onto the downward ramp when I heard a throaty roar from ahead of me. I took the ramp at a gallop and when I emerged into the sunlight on the jetty, I was just in time to see Freddie Baker in his slick-looking speedboat, pulling away from the island. Clearly, he had either got fed up and was leaving to distance himself from Antoinette after she had had the temerity to dump him, or he’d somehow worked out that we were onto him and was trying to make his getaway. I turned and ran back up the ramp and into the garden to call Diego. My shout echoed around the garden and I saw a few heads look up, including Diego’s. My tone must have got to him because he came running.
‘Yes, Dan, what is it? Is something wrong?’
‘It’s Freddie Baker. He’s just gone off in his speedboat and we need to stop him.’
He didn’t need to be asked twice. Together, we ran back down to the jetty and he leapt into the launch with Oscar while I undid the mooring ropes. The engine sprang into life and I jumped aboard as he pulled away. As soon as we were moving, I pulled out my phone and called the inspector.
‘Baker has just left in his speedboat. It looks as though he’s heading back to Venice itself, maybe towards the Grand Canal.’
‘Right, I’ll put out an APB. I’m just setting off now. Do you think he’s suspicious? Has he been spooked?’
‘I don’t think so. It’s not like he’s travelling fast. I certainly haven’t said anything to him, but his girlfriend indicated that they’ve just had a big bust-up and he’d taken a bag down to the boat. According to what he told her, he just wanted to be ready to leave in a hurry when you say the word, but now I reckon he’s trying to get away from his girlfriend, or maybe from the crime scene. Whether this is because he’s got a guilty conscience, or because he’s just fed up, is something we’ll find out. I’m in the launch with Diego, and we’re about a couple of hundred metres behind him, both boats observing the speed limit. We’ll keep him in sight but we’ll leave confronting him to you.’
We followed Freddie Baker for five minutes or so in the direction of San Marco. All was going smoothly as we approached the Doge’s Palace and the line of hotels and restaurants on the quay before it, with both boats still more or less obeying the lagoon speed limit, when I distinctly saw Baker turn his head and look back in our direction. He must have registered that he was being followed because only a handful of seconds later, there was a powerful roar and the bow of the speedboat rose up in the water as he opened the throttle.
Diego reacted immediately and I was almost thrown backwards as he, too, accelerated hard. Alice’s beautiful, polished launch clearly had a powerful engine as well, and he managed more or less to keep pace with the speedboat as it flew across the water towards the entrance to the Grand Canal. Baker kept casting anxious looks back towards us, but when two police launches appeared coming down the Grand Canal towards him, blue lights flashing, he must have panicked. He suddenly spunthe wheel and headed sharply to the right, into a much narrower side canal.
Diego glanced across at me and shouted, ‘He’s crazy going down there at that speed. I’ll do my best to follow him, but you’d better hang on tight.’
With this, he threw the launch into a turn so sharp, we were almost perpendicular to the water for a while and followed the wake of the speedboat. Seconds later, we were flying up a frighteningly narrow canal in Baker’s wake, waves breaking against the five- or six-hundred-year-old buildings on either side, and the spray soaking us. Diego was concentrating hard, while I gritted my teeth and hung onto the side of the boat with one hand, my other arm wrapped around Oscar to stop him being thrown out – although he looked as if he was enjoying himself immensely. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw one of the blue and white police launches tearing up the canal behind us. I was vaguely aware of the disapproving looks of bystanders, and the frightened screams of tourists on the low humpbacked bridges as Freddie’s speedboat bumped its way under them with a tortured scraping noise. Diego showed his professionalism by managing to follow at pace, but without our launch so much as grazing the sides.
A moment or two later, Diego pointed straight ahead of us. In the distance, a rubbish barge was completely blocking the way. He turned towards me and shouted, ‘All he can do now is take a left just before the barge. He’ll then be forced to go left again and head back in the opposite direction. That canal runs parallel to this one, less than a hundred metres away. Do you feel like jumping out and running across? Maybe you can catch him if he decides to get out and make a run for it.’ Even before I started to formulate an answer, he had thrown the engines into reverse and the water boiled and hissed around us as we slowed almost to a halt. He manoeuvred the boat expertly against the side of thecanal and I managed to scramble out. My intention was to leave Oscar with him, but Oscar had other ideas. As I started running down a narrow alley, barely wider than my shoulders, in the direction of Diego’s pointing finger, I almost tripped over as Oscar came shooting past me, tail wagging wildly, having a wonderful time.
We emerged from the alley onto a paved path beside the other canal, with a line of blue and red working boats moored along the far side of it. The roar of the approaching speedboat echoed around the houses, although I couldn’t yet see it. I searched in vain for something I could push or drop into the canal so as to slow the speedboat before deciding that, if all else failed, I would have to do it myself. I ran along to the next bridge, pushing a group of tourists out of the way as I readied myself on the parapet. I was vaguely aware of Oscar’s front paws appearing alongside my hands as we both stared over the low wall, but my attention was riveted on the point about fifty yards away where the side canal emerged into this one. As I looked on, the speedboat screamed around the ninety-degree bend, hopelessly out of control. It bounced heavily against a moored boat on the other side before zigzagging towards me with Freddie Baker clearly visible, desperately spinning the wheel.
The good news from my point of view was that these manoeuvres had reduced his speed considerably, and when the boat reached the bridge on which I was standing, I took a deep breath and leapt.
What happened next wasn’t my finest hour. I landed awkwardly, with one foot on the seat alongside the driver and the other on the slippery deck, causing me to fall sideways and bang my shoulder against the side of the boat. A fraction of a second later, there was a thud as fifty pounds of canine bone and muscle hit me in what’s politely referred to as the lower abdomen, and Idoubled up in pain, totally winded. The boat ricocheted under the bridge like a ball in a pinball machine and continued down the canal, bouncing off the moored boats and the stone walls. Still clutching myself in agony, I opened my eyes to see Freddie Baker above me, reaching for what looked like a starting handle, certainly something big, metallic and heavy. He came towards me and raised it above his head. I tried to get up, but my feet slipped on the wet deck, and I held up an arm in a probably vain attempt to protect myself from the impending blow.
But the blow didn’t come.
There was a squeal and I opened my eyes again to see Freddie Baker with Oscar’s teeth sunk into one of his flashy gold trainers, doing his best to tug him off balance. I was still registering the fact that this was one of the very few times I’d ever seen Oscar attempt to bite anybody, when the boat slewed under yet another low bridge. This time, the clearance between the top of the boat and the bridge was almost non-existent and a second later, there was a heavy thump as the stonework caught Freddie Baker across the shoulders and the back of the head, throwing him onto the deck behind me, where he landed in an unconscious heap. Out of control, but with its speed now considerably reduced, the speedboat veered sharply and nosedived into the wall of the canal, wedging itself between two moored boats and coming to a halt. Mercifully, this also had the effect of stopping the engine, and the ensuing silence was almost deafening.
As I lay there, sucking in huge gulps of air and clutching myself, trying to work out if my shoulder or my nether regions were the more painful, something surreal happened. I looked up from the deck of the boat to a little balcony with wrought-iron railings protruding at first-floor level from one of the houses lining the canal. Up there, I could see the figure of a man, considerably older than me, with a mop of long, white hair hangingdown to his shoulders. He could have been a medieval depiction of God. He looked down at me with a benevolent expression and, to my surprise, produced what looked like a mandolin from his side and began to play. I’ve no idea what the tune was, but the slow, melancholy rhythm had a calming effect on me.
But not on Oscar.
Certain sounds have the effect of encouraging Oscar to start singing and, as I lay there, my Labrador launched into a canine accompaniment to the music that echoed up and down the canal. Tuneful, it wasn’t, but I didn’t have the breath to tell him to shut up and let the man play.
It came as a considerable relief less than a minute later when two blue and white police launches arrived from different directions, with Diego just behind one of them. They slowed to a halt alongside the battered remains of the speedboat, and I saw that one of them contained some familiar faces, among them Giulia Trevisan. Her arrival did the trick. Oscar stopped howling and started wagging his tail as he recognised who had come to see him.
‘Are you all right, Dan?’ Giulia sounded concerned, and I attempted a reassuring wave as Constable Piave jumped athletically onto the rear of the speedboat and crouched down alongside the supine figure of Freddie Baker. He was followed by Sergeant Scarpa, who came over to see how I was. With his assistance, I managed to straighten up and he helped me onto one of the luxurious seats. I gave him a grateful look.
‘Thanks a lot. I wouldn’t recommend jumping off the bridges.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind,Commissario.’ He smiled and glanced back to where the constable was still crouching beside Freddie Baker. ‘How’s he doing, Piave?’
‘It looks like he’s just coming round now. No blood, but he’s going to have a headache tomorrow.’
Above us, the godlike musician came to the end of his performance and sat back to a ripple of applause. A crowd was gathering on both sides of the canal around us and this, as much as anything else, finally spurred me into action. I leant forward and stroked Oscar’s ears. ‘Thanks, old buddy, that’s another one I owe you.’
Oscar looked up and gave me a toothy grin. At this rate, he was going to be eating steak for weeks to come.
26
